A Correspondent Writes:
Major Geoffrey D. Mayhew, who died recently in Tunbridge Wells, at the age of 77, had a long and distinguished career in the coal industry.
Born at Wigan in 1886, the son of Horace Mayhew, D.L., J.P., of Broughton Hall, Flintshire, he was educated at Eton.
After two years at the Wigan School of Mines, he began his mining career in the South Derbyshire coal field.
After serving with the Denbighshire Hussars Yeomanry in the First World War, he returned to coalmining and in 1926 became managing director of Halls Collieries Ltd., Burton-on Trent.
In 1939 he was appointed chairman of the company, and held that post until 1946.

His wide experience in the industry was recognized in his appointment in 1928 as chairman of the South Derbyshire Coal Owners Association, as a member of the Central Valuation Board under the Coal Act, 1938, of the East Midland Regional Valuation Board, and of the Central Val;uation Board under the Coal Industry Nationalization Act, 1946, and in 1946 as president of the Midland Counties institute of Engineers.
He was director of Amalgmated Anthracite Holdings Limited, and a number of other companies.
He was a Justice of the Peace of Staffordshire, and also one-time chairman of the Lichfield Division of the Conservative and Unionist Association.
He married first in 1915, Bertha Irene Short, of Sunderland, who died in 1929, and by whom he had one son and one daughter, and, secondly, in 1931, Joan Maclean, of Scarborough, by whom he had two sons.